Breaking: Facebook Updates Beacon — Facebook has just announced that they will be updating their Beacon system. Stories will no longer be published "without a user proactively consenting." According to Facebook here is how the Beacon changes work:

Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking — Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program. — Within the last 10 days …

Facebook and The Privacy Backlash — For those of who don't know (ie you don't read techmeme, techcrunch, and their ilk), Facebook has been the subject of a mini privacy backlash over its 'beacon'. Just yesterday Facebook made a move to attempt to alleviate some of the privacy concerns

To Save Its Bacon, Facebook Weakens Beacon — Three weeks is a long time on the Internet. It was on November 6, I raised the question: Is Facebook Beacon a privacy nightmare? Three days later, my next post, Facebook's Cruel Intentions elicited some response from the Palo Alto …

New feature: OpenID commenting — Blogger in Draft now lets you enable OpenID-based commenting, in your blogs' Settings | Comments tab: — (OpenID comments work in both the Anyone and Registered Users modes) — This means that users of OpenID-enabled services — such as LiveJournal and WordPress …

Google Reader Gets Recommendations, Drag-and-Drop — Google has released two new features for its RSS reading product, Recommendations and Drag-and-Drop. — The Discovery recommendation feature suggests new sites a user may wish to read based on current subscriptions and (interestingly) browsing history.

Google Will Apply to Participate in FCC Spectrum Auction — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it will apply to participate in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming auction of wireless spectrum in the 700 megahertz (MHz) band. — As part of the nationally mandated transition …

Facebook Nabs $60 Million Investment from Li Ka-shing — While a lot of people were beginning to doubt Facebook's ability to raise more money after getting a lofty $15 billion valuation following a $240 million investment from Microsoft last month, it seems the stakes are not too high …

Leopard is the New Vista, and It's Pissing Me Off — Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror. — I'm not sure what ticks me off more about Leoptard (I can't take credit for that nickname—some Brit coined it) …

Gamespot Editor Fired Over Kane & Lynch Review? [Rumor] — We've heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were.